‘Once Upon a Time’ Turns Up the Magic in Season 2

The curse was broken in Storybrooke in the Season 1 finale of “Once Upon a Time,” and not only did the inhabitants get back their memories of their lives in Fairytale Land, but Mr. Gold (Robert Carlyle) brought magic to town!

“I think [Season 2] is going to be all about exploring the family relationship between — I am going to call them — The Charmings,” says Ginnifer Goodwin, who plays Snow White and Mary Margaret. “It is going to be all about exploring magic in this world because magic operates here in a different way. And, as we all remember our dual lives, we are all going to actually be playing a third character because now we are amalgamations of the characters we were playing before but we are still going to be playing those characters separately in flashbacks.”

But of course there’s more. “Once Upon a Time” creators and showrunners Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis gave XfinityTV.com the scoop on what we can expect when Season 2 premieres on Sunday, Sept. 30 at 8/7c on ABC.

Preview Season 2 of “Once Upon a Time”:

We're sorry, but this content is not available to your web browser.

The Power of Magic: “We want to continue to explore the themes of love and magic and the power of magic, and magic as a metaphor for a lot of things in our lives,” Horowitz says. “As we said at the end of Season one, magic is coming. And when that comes, what does it mean when there is a great power, and how does it affect all of these relationships? What is really cool to us is to be able to explore these parental relationships, where you have parents that are contemporaries, and a guy like David [Josh Dallas] who is now a grandfather to Henry [Jared Gilmore].”

New Characters: Princess Aurora (Sarah Bolger) and Mulan (Jamie Chung) will join the cast. “We think they come into the show in a very surprising and unique way,” Kitsis says.”Because of that, we don’t want to talk much about it. We are very excited because, like everything we have done, we are not interested in re-telling or showing you the version that you are used to, so we think we have great spins on both characters. What we love is how they will interact with the people we already know and love.”

Big Bad Captain Hook: Another villain will be added now that Captain Hook (Colin O’Donoghue) is set for the season: “Peter Pan is my favorite fairytale,” Kitsis continues. “For the last year, Adam and I could not get the rights, so we have had Captain Hook on our shelf, waiting to come out for a while, so we are really excited to tell his story and how he interacts with our characters.”

Rumple’s Wrench: Belle (Emilie de Ravin) and Red Riding Hood (Meghan Ory) have been upgraded to series regulars. And with more Belle comes more drama for Rumpelstiltskin. Says Horowitz, “Rumple [Carlyle] is a man who feels he is incapable of being loved. So what happens when the person he always regretted letting get away comes back? How does that interfere with his ultimate goal? Because he is a man who always chooses between love and power. For us it is also fun because Belle has been in Fairytale Land in a locked asylum so, theoretically, she has never seen a phone, so a parking meter might frighten her.” And as for Belle, Horowitz says, “What we love about Emilie is she is an incredibly versatile actress, so there is so much we are excited to do with the character. What we loved about her interpretation of Belle is she brought something that was uniquely her to it.”

The Return of the Huntsman: Even though the sheriff is definitely dead, Jamie Dornan, who plays him, will be back “We saw him in the finale,” Kitsis points out. “He is still alive as the Huntsman. But we miss Jamie. We designed the character for the arc because we thought as Henry says in the pilot, ‘The battle will begin.’ If no one dies, there are no stakes. So we designed it with Jamie to do the first seven episodes, and we knew going off into winter break, we were going to kill him. The amount of death threats the two of us have received as a result…”

Emma Deals with Guilt: How will Emma [Jennifer Morrison] deal with the fact that she found her parents? “Emma is a character who, her entire life, wanted to meet her parents,” Kitsis says. “She has met them, but this isn’t exactly how she pictured it and this isn’t an easy thing to deal with.”

“Once Upon a Time” returns for its second season on Sunday, Sept. 30 at 8/7c on ABC.